Schneider-Electric – Gigaomhttp://gigaom.com
The industry leader in emerging technology researchMon, 19 Mar 2018 22:01:45 +0000en-UShourly1Energy giants back BuildingIQ and its machine learning, energy data softwarehttp://gigaom.com/2013/01/22/energy-giants-back-buildingiq-and-its-machine-learning-energy-data-software/
http://gigaom.com/2013/01/22/energy-giants-back-buildingiq-and-its-machine-learning-energy-data-software/#commentsTue, 22 Jan 2013 18:19:57 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=603206All those large commercial buildings you walk by every day — or maybe work in — have big ol’ heating and air conditioning units that are often times controlled by what’s called a building management system. While it might not be very sexy, the business of making those management systems more efficient, has emerged as a hot sector in recent years. One of the leading startups in that space, called BuildingIQ, has raised a new round of $9 million in funding from the investing arms of energy giants like Schneider Electric, Alstom, and Siemens (s si).

BuildingIQ, founded in 2009 with research from Australia’s national research group, optimizes building management systems with a predictive engine using real time data, such as the information from weather services and the power grid. The company also has machine learning algorithms that tweak the system to make the buildings efficient but without making them uncomfortable for tenants. Think of it like the Nest learning thermostat but for commercial buildings.

BuildingIQ’s system can also work with utilities’ demand response programs, or when a utility asks building managers to turn down their energy use at peak times of day (picture a scorching mid-Summer afternoon in Texas). It has partnered with Nevada Energy on a demand response program. BuildingIQ says it can deliver 20-to-30 percent reductions in energy use from the HVAC system.

Check out this video of BuildingIQ CEO Michael Zimmerman explaining how the system works

And me interviewing Zimmerman:

The full round came from Aster Capital — which is a group with funding from Schneider Electric, Alstom and Solvay — Siemens Financial Services (SFS VC) and Paladin Capital.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2013/01/22/energy-giants-back-buildingiq-and-its-machine-learning-energy-data-software/feed/1The quiet but massive market for energy IThttp://gigaom.com/2011/12/18/the-quiet-but-massive-market-for-energy-it/
http://gigaom.com/2011/12/18/the-quiet-but-massive-market-for-energy-it/#commentsMon, 19 Dec 2011 02:00:54 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=456413Beyond the clamor and excitement surrounding traditional cleantech companies – solar, wind, energy efficiency, and alternative fuels – there are many attractive and growing, middle market energy technology companies quietly improving the operations and capabilities of electric utilities, oil and gas companies, government agencies, and energy market traders, among others, with software, data and analytics, and consulting and integration services. While the “green” aspects of these businesses aren’t always obvious or essential to their marketing, the benefits they provide to businesses in the energy sector are compelling, and strategic and financial acquirers are taking notice and paying attractive prices.

Of the more than fifty U.S. middle market energy software transactions that have occurred in 2011, just 25 percent would typically be perceived as “cleantech”. The remaining 75 percent provide solutions that improve the capabilities and operations of energy market participants, but don’t have a “green” component at the core of the offering. Their software solutions are often tightly integrated with critical energy infrastructure and operational technologies, leverage complex algorithms and data processing engines, and are integral to customer operations and difficult to replace.

Software business models vary from software as a service (“SaaS”) subscription pricing to traditional license and maintenance pricing. Companies that have been able to drive premium valuations typically have high customer retention, track records of increased revenue per customer, and large and growing recurring revenue streams.

While the global energy IT sector is growing at a modest rate, just over 4 percent, it is large, over $100 billion, according to Gartner. The substantial annual IT budgets of companies in the energy sector create opportunity for middle market solution providers to quickly gain scale and grow at double digit rates. Utilities and other market participants looking for increased efficiency and lower maintenance and IT personnel costs are increasingly directing their IT budgets towards third-party software solutions in favor of antiquated, in-house systems. In addition, an ever more stringent regulatory environment is placing heightened compliance and reporting demands on energy companies that are difficult and costly to meet with existing internal IT resources.

M&A Opportunities

The highest profile M&A transaction in the traditional energy technology sector in 2011 is perhaps Schneider Electric’s acquisition of Telvent, which was valued at $2.0 billion (12 x consensus 2011 EBITDA). Characteristic of many acquisitions in the sector, Telvent provides Schneider with multiple benefits: an attractive recurring revenue stream, and the ability to bring additional technology and capabilities as it pursues energy, oil and gas, water and transportation projects across both Schneider’s and Telvent’s geographic footprints. Schneider expects to generate sales synergies of €250 – €300 million through 2016, representing substantial increases over Telvent’s €753 million in 2010 sales.

Other examples of middle market energy technology transactions outside of cleantech in 2011 include Hellman & Friedman’s acquisition of OpenLink Financial; Welsh Carson’s $500 million acquisition of Triple Point Technology; IHS’s $500 million acquisition of Seismic Micro-Technology; and GE’s acquisition of SmartSignal. Growth equity investors have also been funding the next generation of energy technology companies through private placements in 2011, such as TA Associates and Madrone Capital Partners investing $100+ million in MicroSeismic; Goldman Sachs, Kleiner Perkins, Energy Capital Group, and others investing $60 million in NEOS GeoSolutions; and Kleiner Perkins and Technology Crossover Ventures investing $135 million in OSIsoft.

Expect 2012 to be another very active year in middle market energy technology M&A. Those firms that may drive M&A activity include recently acquired platforms such as OpenLink and Triple Point, which are backed by fresh capital and new potential add-on acquisition strategies; existing private equity platforms such as P2 Energy (Vista Equity), Quorum Business Solutions (Riverstone) and Energy Solutions International (Oaktree / GFI) that are positioned to complete add-ons; large industrial energy companies such as GE (s GE), ABB (s ABB), Honeywell (s HON), Schneider, and Siemens that have historically pursued targets to build on their IT / OT convergence initiatives; and large technology companies such as Oracle, IBM (s IBM), and SAP (s SAP) that continue to add new vertical capabilities, data and analytics to their diverse software portfolios.

Buoyant debt markets combined with the strong revenue visibility and attractive free cash flow characteristics of companies in the sector should further contribute to private equity activity and new platform companies being established.

Tyler Dewing is a Vice President at Harris Williams & Co. and a member of the firm’s Technology, Media & Telecom (TMT) Group. Harris Williams & Co. is a leading middle market investment bank with a 20-year legacy in mergers and acquisitions transactions and is actively involved in the energy technology and cleantech industries, among others. The firm’s TMT Group has extensive industry knowledge and transaction leadership experience spanning the software, internet, digital media, IT services, and communications sectors. For more information, visit www.harriswilliams.com.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2011/12/18/the-quiet-but-massive-market-for-energy-it/feed/1The smart grid acquisition tally to datehttp://gigaom.com/2011/12/06/the-smart-grid-acquisition-tally-to-date/
http://gigaom.com/2011/12/06/the-smart-grid-acquisition-tally-to-date/#commentsTue, 06 Dec 2011 15:41:13 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=450457One of the most high-profile acquisitions in the smart grid sector was announced on Monday: Siemens finally made a meaningful play for smart meter data and scored eMeter, one of the leading smart meter software companies. For the occasion we have pulled together our recurring smart grid acquisitions list including the new ones we’ve seen in recent months. Per usual, ping me if you see any we’ve missed:

]]>http://gigaom.com/2011/12/06/the-smart-grid-acquisition-tally-to-date/feed/1How Federal Legislation Could Change Digital Energy Datahttp://gigaom.com/report/how-federal-legislation-could-change-digital-energy-data/
http://gigaom.com/report/how-federal-legislation-could-change-digital-energy-data/#respondWed, 01 Jun 2011 19:00:17 +0000http://pro.gigaom.com/?p=69705The emergence of the smart grid means that a wealth of energy data is starting to pour from the power grid. Utilities and startups want to leverage that data to deliver services to customers and make money in the process — all while protecting that data from misuse. California has made some recent steps to […]
]]>http://gigaom.com/report/how-federal-legislation-could-change-digital-energy-data/feed/0Schneider Electric to Buy Smart Grid Firm Telventhttp://gigaom.com/2011/06/01/schneider-electric-to-buy-smart-grid-firm-telvent/
Wed, 01 Jun 2011 15:15:19 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=353400Power gear giants are continuing their smart grid shopping spree. On Tuesday, Schneider Electric announced that it is bidding to buy software maker Telvent (s TLVT) for $40 per share, or about $2 billion. The acquisition would give Schneider, which is a massive power equipment maker, more software and IT capabilities for the power grid.

Schneider also announced on Monday that it plans to buy 74 percent of Luminous Power Technologies, which makes power grid gear — like batteries and inverters — for about $310 million. Luminous is based in New Delhi, India, while Telvent is based in Madrid, Spain, and is 40-percent owned by Spanish conglomerate Abengoa.

About a year ago, Swiss electrical equipment giant ABB jumped feet first into the smart grid with the purchase of software maker Ventyx (from Vista Equity Partners) for over $1 billion. Then in January of this year, ABB acquired another smart grid software company Obvient. Siemens has announced a flurry of new projects and partnerships over the past couple of years looking to add on smart grid software, and has a goal to double its current growth rate in the smart grid sector to capture about $8.5 billion in global business over the next five years.

Schneider has made other acquisitions in the past, including through a joint partnership with Alstom, bought the transmission and distribution business of Areva for $3.25 billion. Schneider also bought the energy procurement and energy management provider Summit Energy for $268 million earlier this year.

Schneider’s $2 billion offer — at $40 per share — for Telvent was 16 percent higher than Telvent’s closing share price on Monday, and 36 percent higher than Telvent’s average share over the past 3 months, said Schneider. Telvent had 2010 sales of $1.09 billion, and adjusted EBITDA of $165.96 million. Telvent’s shares rose 15.27 percent on the news of the deal.

The power grid is going digital and will increasingly rely on software, analytics, computing, communications networks and data management. The power gear companies are in a strong position to make these types of purchases, and along with competing with each other, contend with IT giants like Cisco, and building automation companies like Honeywell (s HON) and Johnson Controls (s JCI).

]]>How Federal Legislation Could Change Digital Energy Datahttp://gigaom.com/2011/06/01/how-federal-legislation-could-change-digital-energy-data/
http://gigaom.com/2011/06/01/how-federal-legislation-could-change-digital-energy-data/#commentsWed, 01 Jun 2011 13:00:12 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=352722Will utility customers across the U.S. be legally entitled to access their own energy usage data? And if so, how hard will it be for utilities to deliver that data to customers? We’ve already seen how California is planning to tackle that tricky subject, and now a Senate bill would bring the same issues to a national stage.

In my latest Weekly Update at GigaOm Pro (subscription required), I cover the implications of the Electric Consumer Right to Know Act, or e-KNOW act, which was introduced by Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) last month. While the current gridlock in Congress makes passage of any bills uncertain this year, it’s likely that e-KNOW will serve as a template for some kind of eventual federal regulations on energy data.

So what’s in the bill? On many points, e-KNOW seems to echo the California Public Utility Commission’s recent proposed ruling (PDF) on the subject. For example, it mandates that utilities must provide their customers their own energy data in whatever format it’s available, as soon as possible.

It also makes it clear that customers own their own energy data, and are entitled to share it with third parties of their choosing. There’s good reason for smart grid companies to be pleased by a bill that would mandate broad consumer access to energy data, since they’ll need that data to deliver energy control and saving services to customers.

At the same time, e-KNOW follows the lead of the CPUC in requiring that utilities turn over customer data in a way that “provides adequate protections for the security of the information and the privacy of the electric consumer.” Just how utilities are to simultaneously open data to customers and keep that data secure — and how smart grid companies’ plans to use energy data might come into conflict with consumer data privacy policies — remains to be seen.

At the highest level, however, the significance of the e-KNOW Act lies in its move to nationalize a utility regulatory process that now goes on mainly at a state-by-state level. While California is among the first states to lay out such broad proposals for how to balance utility customer energy data access and privacy, other states such as Texas, Pennsylvania and Colorado are also busy working on their own rules. By placing nationwide oversight in the hands of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, e-KNOW would create a nationwide set of regulations — a development worth keeping an eye on.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2011/06/01/how-federal-legislation-could-change-digital-energy-data/feed/2LEED To Embrace Demand Responsehttp://gigaom.com/2011/05/03/leed-to-embrace-demand-response/
http://gigaom.com/2011/05/03/leed-to-embrace-demand-response/#commentsTue, 03 May 2011 15:36:59 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=339507Green buildings, meet demand response. The U.S. Green Building Council is studying ways it can count demand response — turning down power to help utilities shave peak power demand — as part of its LEED rating system. That could open up new incentives for big commercial buildings to install technology that connects their LEED buildings to smart grid systems, and open up new markets for demand response providers around the country.

The USGBC expects to publish its first “Demand Response LEED Pilot Credit” later this spring. Next up will be a series of pilot projects that will bring existing LEED buildings into demand response programs, said Brendan Owens, vice president of LEED technical development at USGBC.

While the pilot projects haven’t been named yet, Owens said they should be able to take part in this summer’s demand response season, to help the USGBC and its partners figure out just what weight to give demand response credits in LEED’s Energy & Atmosphere Credit system.

As for just how many LEED points could be attached to demand response, he said it’s too early to say. While building energy efficiency and onsite renewable energy are currently counted for LEED ratings, “this is the very first time we’ve deliberately gone to the other side of the meter,” he said.

Still, there’s good reason for green building standards to take peak power reductions into account, he said. Utilities are desperate to cut their peak loads, which otherwise have to be met with expensive “peaker” power plants, usually gas-fired turbines, that sometimes only run for a few hundred hours every year. Keeping peak load growth in check can thus have an outsized effect in reducing the overall carbon footprint associated with electricity generation.

Indeed, the new program could be a key way to expand the share of commercial buildings interested in participating in demand response, he said. USGBC has identified about 4,400 LEED-certified buildings that could be targets for demand response, and LEED-certified buildings add up to some 6 billion square feet, with 1.5 million more square feet per day in new buildings registering for certification, he noted.

LEED building owners — the kind of energy-aware, ratings-motivated customer base — could provide a significant opportunity for utilities and demand response providers trying to expand their markets. Big demand response aggregators such as EnerNOC (s ENOC), Comverge (s COMV) and Constellation Energy (s CEG) will likely be looking at ways to approach the LEED opportunity, as well as big building control players such as Honeywell (s HON), Johnson Controls (s JCI) and Schneider Electric that have been making moves into demand response technologies.

In fact, Schneider is on the USGBC committee that’s working on the new demand response credit, and will be playing a role in the pilot projects set to start this summer. Ross Malme, former director of Schneider’s demand response resource center who recently left to become a new partner at consulting firm Skipping Stone (another partner on the project) told me last month that companies are looking forward to being able to market their demand response programs as “sustainability services,” rather than just ways to shave energy use to make money.

Another partner on the USGBC project committee is Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Demand Response Research Center, home of the technology known as Open Automated Demand Response, or OpenADR. Owens said that the council would prefer participating buildings to have technology in place to automate the way they turn down power in response to demand response signals, though it won’t be required, and having Berkeley Labs on board probably means that OpenADR will be given a chance to fill that role.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2011/05/03/leed-to-embrace-demand-response/feed/2Electric Car Boom Could Deliver a Surge in Grid Powerhttp://gigaom.com/2011/04/29/electric-car-boom-could-deliver-a-surge-in-grid-power/
http://gigaom.com/2011/04/29/electric-car-boom-could-deliver-a-surge-in-grid-power/#commentsFri, 29 Apr 2011 07:00:57 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=337760UPDATE: Here’s the bad news about electric vehicles: They’re going to be hell on the grid. The Utilities Telecom Council trade group reports that electric vehicles will require a 16-fold increase in power usage in the next decade, putting pressure on utilities to find out how to handle car charging as quickly as possible.

UTC’s report, prepared by The Shpigler Group, takes a rather optimistic view of how popular plug-in cars are going to be. UPDATED: It predicts electricity demand from plug-ins will grow from 146,000 megawatt-hours in 2010 to 2.6 million mWh kWh by 2020.

That’s a fraction of overall grid demand, but it’s largely the way people will plug in their EVs that could make it particularly hard for utilities to deal with the trend. Each plug-in car adds roughly the equivalent of a new house to the local grid’s electricity demand, which is something most neighborhood distribution feeders and substations weren’t built to supply.

Blown transformers, neighborhood blackouts and other problems could emerge as a result of too many EVs in concentrated areas getting plugged into neighborhood garages en masse. Pacific Gas & Electric has identified hot spots like Berkeley — home of the plug-in Toyota (s tm) Prius hybrid retrofit market — as neighborhoods that might be facing this kind of problem soon.

Charge them around midnight, however, and the nation could see plug-ins replace more than half its 254 million existing cars without adding a single new power plant, according to a study from DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. That’s because lots of 24/7 power generation resources get wasted at night, when everyone goes to bed and power demand peak drops to its minimum level. Again, however, we need technology to help us solve this problem.

Utilities are preparing for future EVs with a host of pilot projects, with the likes of gear providers GE (s GE), Siemens (s si), Schneider Electric, and ABB (s abb). At the same time, automakers are partnering with these companies in order to build the charging networks they’ll need to sell more EVs in the next decade. Private car-charging networks, such as NRG Energy’s subscription-style EV charging network (s nrg) in Texas, are also emerging.

Of course, all these issues depend upon how popular plug-in cars will become over the next decade. It’s hard to justify spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build the electric equivalent of a nationwide network of gas stations before you know how many EVs there will be on the road.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2011/04/29/electric-car-boom-could-deliver-a-surge-in-grid-power/feed/7Will Consumers or Utilities Control the Future Power Grid?http://gigaom.com/2011/04/21/emeter-abb-technology-ventures-schneider-electric-greennet/
http://gigaom.com/2011/04/21/emeter-abb-technology-ventures-schneider-electric-greennet/#commentsThu, 21 Apr 2011 23:06:24 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=334956As energy becomes more decentralized (both generation and management), there’s a great opportunity for apps to help direct the flow of power. But at Green:Net on Thursday, Scott Henneberry, VP of Smart Grid Strategy of Schneider Electric, said, “The utility has a real challenge to make sure everyone on the distribution line has good, reliable power.” He pointed out pilot programs that allow utilities to have control over the inverter of a consumer’s electric-vehicle charger or solar photovoltaic panel. He added that when utilities have some level of control it is beneficial to everyone because then the utility can manage the energy throughout the smart grid.

Larsh Johnson, CTO of eMeter, said that solving the problem of unreliability due to decentralized energy, “ultimately comes down to financial transactions,” and that metering electricity will be key. Apps will have to keep track of who bought energy and who sold it at every point in the process — “effectively, what’s going on on a wholesale transmission level.” In this way, the smart grid will function like the wholesale energy trading market, but the trading will happen among utilities, power plants and consumers.

Utilities have a great opportunity to use the information they’re gathering from customer meters to operate their grid better, according to Johnson. Hennenberry described a new vision of demand response, sometimes called the killer app of the smart grid. “Because of deregulated marketplaces, demand response is moving toward a more real-time automated activity,” he said.

Renewable energy sources and electric vehicles are accelerating the need for smarter, faster and more automated demand response. As Andrew Tang, the managing director of ABB Ventures, pointed out, electric vehicles not only require a significant amount of energy, but because of people’s work commutes, the demand happens at peak times. Renewable energy sources are not as reliable as base load energy (nuclear, coal or natural gas sources), so Tang said utilities need to have spinning reserves for when those sources aren’t available. Johnson advocated an even more decentralized approach. “I’d argue for personal storage,” he said, so that “if I have solar panels on the roof, if the power fails, I can use it. That’s not the case now.”

]]>http://gigaom.com/2011/04/21/emeter-abb-technology-ventures-schneider-electric-greennet/feed/1Mixed Signals for Q1 Greentech Investmenthttp://gigaom.com/2011/04/20/mixed-signals-for-q1-greentech-investment/
Thu, 21 Apr 2011 05:26:48 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=333807What to make of the mixed messages in the green technology investment figures from the first quarter of 2011? Depending on your point of view, the first three months either signal a record-setting expansion for the industry or retrenchment in the face of economic and political headwinds.

My first-quarter 2011 report at GigaOM Pro (subscription required) lays out highlights and breaks out in-depth details by industry sector. But at the highest level, the nature of the first quarter’s data is reflected in a big rise in venture capital investment, and a big drop-off in global clean energy financing.

First, the bad news. Bloomberg New Energy Finance reported last week that global renewable energy investment fell off sharply in the first quarter, falling to $31.1 billion, more than a third down from the fourth quarter’s $47.1 billion. The biggest category of asset finance fell to $25.7 billion from the previous quarter’s $36.6 billion.

While part of that is due to the “hangover” from the record-high, fourth-quarter investments, it was mainly driven by skidding solar markets in Europe and headwinds for the U.S. wind power industry, now facing decade-lows in prices for the natural gas that spins the turbines it competes against.

Against this backdrop, however, shone some strong numbers for green technology venture capital investments, which grew to $2.57 billion in the first quarter, according to the Cleantech Group. That’s the second-highest quarter on record, and up 52 percent from the fourth quarter’s $1.69 billion. (Bloomberg New Energy Finance put its more restrictive tally of renewable energy venture capital at $1.8 billion in the first quarter, up just a hair from $1.7 billion in the fourth quarter.)

Cleantech Group’s big numbers came with some catches, however. First, the 159 deals reported was the lowest quarterly number by deal number since mid-2009, and about 64 percent of those deals were follow-on rounds. In dollar terms, those follow-on rounds made up $2.39 billion— 93 percent of the total amount raised. That indicates a field in which well-funded startups are dominating the available VC investment.

Indeed, a good portion of the quarter’s haul consisted of $100-million-plus, late follow-on rounds for BrightSource Energy, Miasole, Fisker Automotive and Bloom Energy. These companies have raised massive amounts of VC cash already, and that they returned to investors, rather than seeking financing from the public markets, could be taken as either a sign of a weak economy or potential weakness in their own financials. Add in the $75 million in secured debt raised by Solyndra in the first quarter, and you’ve got a host of high-profile greentech startups that will have a lot to prove in 2011.

Greentech IPOs had a relatively low showing in the first quarter, with nine public offerings yielding a combined total of $2.1 billion — much lower than the $8.24 billion from 30 IPOs in the fourth quarter of 2010. At the same time, however, green mergers and acquisitions were on the rise, with $15.3 billion in disclosed transactions, nearly double the $8.76 billion in disclosed transactions in the fourth quarter of 2010, Cleantech Group reported. Smart grid was a particularly active sector, with General Electric (s GE), Schneider Electric, IBM (s IBM), Johnson Controls (s JCI) and Alstom all making significant purchases aimed at expanding the range of products and services they offer.

With the U.S. locked in a partisan struggle over whether or not much of the country’s greentech support should be done away with altogether; Europe facing continuing financial crises; and Japan reeling from the earthquake, tsunami and still-unfolding nuclear power plant disaster, it looks as if China will remain the key government backer of green technology.